Similarities and Differences among parabola, ellipse and hyperbola

All the students who would be able to read this article and, coincidently, who are taking Math 51 in MSU-IIT, this is something that you must keep in mind.

One lesson in your course is the conic section. This three-part lesson is too bulky because it is comprised of lessons in parabola, ellipse and hyperbola which all present some varying concepts and properties. You might get confused of what the conic section you are dealing with especially if you have poorly familiarized the properties of these three. For this reason, I have summed up some of the similarities and differences of parabola, ellipse and hyperbola for you to familiarize.

The first difference is with regards to the eccentricity of the conic section. If the eccentricity is equal to one, the graph of the conic section looks like a parabola. However, if the eccentricity is lesser than one and greater than one then you are dealing with ellipse and hyperbola respectively. Second is on the location of the vertex (or vertices) and the focus (or foci) of the conic section on the graph. There is only a focus and a vertex of the graph of the parabola. On the other hand, the graphs of the ellipse and hyperbola would show that there are two vertices and foci, and that they are collinear with the center on a particular axis. The difference between the graph of the ellipse and hyperbola is mainly on the position of their foci and vertices. The foci of an ellipse come next to the center of the conic section at a certain distance. However, the foci of the hyperbola come after the vertices of hyperbola; the vertices of the hyperbola come next to the center at a certain distance. Lastly, the difference between these conic sections can be noticed on the general form of the equation of the conic section. The degree of the polynomial of the parabola, ellipse and the hyperbola is 2. However, only a variable in the equation of the parabola is raised to this certain degree (This is true only to the equations of parabola which graph is on a translated or untranslated axes.) unlike in the equations of both ellipse and hyperbola which variable, say x and y, are both raised to 2. These are just few of the similarities and differences of parabola, ellipse and hyperbola which can help you in dealing with these conic sections. It might help you a lot but remember that in dealing with these conic sections, you actually need not get familiarized with the above properties as long as you understand thoroughly the concepts that vary the conic sections among each other.

My difficulties in learning the English language

I’ve always wanted to know how to write and speak accurately in English for I see that it is cool to be good at the language. That is why, I do the things that my teachers advise me to observe at all times should I want to be proficient at the subject. However, despite how I try to do the “rituals” and persevere as they always say, I still continue to stumble in both writing and speaking the language.

In writing, I have hard time in constructing my paragraphs. I have difficulties on what I should fill in my composition. It is not because I know nothing about what I am supposed to write but perhaps it is something on the coherence of the paragraphs that I mind most of the time. I often end up with a composition which paragraphs do really not stick to each other; that is, the flow of my paragraphs and even my sentences is not that smooth for my readers to easily grasp what I am trying to say. There is also a problem on the unity of my compositions. Most of my writings do not talk about one main idea. My sentences ramify to different directions. It seems that whenever I try to write, my pen appears to have a mind of its own that it writes everything even though it has nothing to do with my topic. Lastly, the worst thing that I am very much worried about when it comes to writing is with regards on the syntax. It is quite pathetic to know that at this age, I still have no mastery on grammar. Consequently, I often end up with sentences that are very ungrammatical, not to mention the spelling of the words and even the punctuation marks that I often miss out.

Similarly, speaking English is as difficult as putting the language on the paper. Just like in writing, I also have hard time in speaking or communicating through the language. Sometimes, I find it inefficient to communicate through it. I can construct a message in my mind and I can somehow speak it out through English but the problem is that my listeners can hardly understand what I am trying to say. Perhaps it is because I am not that good in pronouncing the words or maybe there is really an awry with how I construct my sentences and that my listeners find it very confusing to interpret. Whatever the reason is, I am certain that I really need to improve or maybe develop an ability in communicating with English as a medium.

Indeed there are really a lot of problems that I need to hurdle over before I can say that I am already a good language user. These obstacles are really tough ones that when I look at it, I somehow feel daunted. But whenever I see the doors of opportunities that will be opened to me if I have this capability in exploiting the language, I somehow regain the faith of not stumbling in this battle and I even feel the urge of expending more effort in order to do a lot greater. After all, there is no certainty of what this life will be leading to. Who knows, one day, you might see me writing articles on newspapers or even speaking before a crowd.

Five heads are better than one

I used to work alone; that is, I tend to keep myself away from other people whenever I am busy working for some things. Well, I actually don’t like sharing job to other people for I see that I am more efficient if I work it myself. It was not until Friday that I have known how good and how more efficient it is to work as a group. It was not until that day that I have known the beauty of sharing ideas and giving feedbacks to one another. Thanks to my group mates who helped me realize that. They were the ones who helped me completely change my perception about a group, and proved to me that a team is indeed a collective effort and that every member of it does his/her part.

To tell everyone honestly, that sentence outline that we made last Friday was actually one of the works that I had become contented and very sure of. It often happen that I become happy about the outcomes of activities which I usually work all alone. Thanks to Karyl, Mark, Grace and Hana for helping me carry out that task. If it weren’t for our collective effort, we wouldn’t be able to come up with, I should say, an outstanding sentence outline out of our topic, and most importantly, if it weren’t for these guys, up to now, I would still never realize that five heads do really work better than one.;)

Oh! Oh! Here they are again

Exams are fast approaching and that means another problems are yet to come.

It has always been my attitude to relate major exams especially in math with a nightmare that I cannot avoid easily. It's not because I fail to prepare myself for them but because I fail to manage that nervous feeling that I inevitably feel during the exams. As a result, I often get distracted and that I end up failing in answering even the simple problems. Subsequent to that are scores which no one can ever admire about.

Whew! I just hope, I can escape away from them and pass the course without taking them. Hehe.

Thanks a lot!

Since elementary, I’ve really had difficulties in managing facts about a certain reference (i.e. author, publisher, etc.) so as to make it adhere to the rules in referencing published and unpublished reading materials. It was not until Wednesday, February 3, that it became a lot clearer to me. Thanks to our activity that did not just teach me the rules in referencing but also gave me the chance to mingle with the persons who, I thought, I would just know by face throughout this semester.

Unusual!

I do not know how I should regard the week ago, whether it was good or bad one for me, but I know that it was memorable. Well, apart from the fact that it was a lot different from my typical weeks, the days last week had caused me peculiar feelings that I had never felt before. The trauma last Tuesday and the euphoria in Friday night were the major feelings that brought me to describe the week in this way.

My classes last week were the unusual. Well, my class in History used to start with a casual-type of reporting, however, my Tuesday class last week turned into a dramatic session for us. It was morning of that day when our teacher entered our class and sadly said to us that the assistant dean of the College of Arts and Social Sciences and her great mentor as well passed away the night before that day. We had really felt that she was trying not to cry as she was thinking of the right words in order to vividly report the bad news, but in the end, we had just seen that tears fell from her eyes as she was saying it to us. From that moment, we felt how affected she was that she was not able to hide her emotions. It was also that time that I first saw a teacher crying in front of us, and I was greatly moved by that. I understood that it is never easy to lose someone in life and I further understood that it was something that I must feel sorry for. But what I never easily fathomed was that why I was affected so much that I was not able to focus on the discussions in my other class that day.


Just as I thought that sadness would be effaced as I would embark another day in life, unfortunately, that pity feeling had decided not to leave me all throughout the week. As a result, I got frustrated in my other classes. In Math, I was so distracted in the quiz and that I did not readily know how to evaluate the simple problem in limits. Similarly, I was also side-tracked by the three activities that preceded my English class last Friday, and that I did not know how I was supposed to expend more effort to keep me up that hour when my activity in P.E., the quiz in biology and the new lesson in Chemistry had already consumed the energy that I left for my English class. And the horror of it all was that I wasn’t able to appreciate the new lessons that I have learned, the assignments that will train me more and the life that I had live through those days.

Nevertheless, there were still happenings in the school that I enjoyed, specifically the activities in the celebration of the 33rd foundation of the College of Engineering. The week was the week of the dragons, and that fact had somehow helped me free myself from the stress in studies. There were a lot of activities that I enjoyed, such as the foot parade last Monday, the Sikat Solar Car Exhibit that did not just impressed me but also had me salute the Filipino students behind that invention and above all was the cultural night where the search for Ginoong Inhinyero was showcased. Along with that were the competitions in singing, dancing and the competition they called “wannabe” that entertained me so much. In the edge of that Friday night was indeed a great relief and somehow a partial fulfillment of my first- year stay here in IIT.


Indeed, the week was full of sad, tiring yet somehow memorable activities for me. Of course, the fun times were also there and the challenges that I hurdled over could not just be easily deleted from the list. For these, I should say that this is one of my memorable weeks this second semester.

GM Foods in the kitchen: Is this some kind of a joke?

Genetically Modified Organism (GMO) products are submissive to ethical discussions; hence, they should not be implored to people for consumption.

GMO’s are variants of its particular species which genetic make-ups have been altered that caused these products to be yielded as big and as consumable as they could possibly be. They are brought about by the genetic engineering methods that revolutionize agriculture by increasing yields and resistance of these products from pests, improving their nutritional value and producing them in desirable traits. Among the genetically modified organisms that have been widely produced nowadays are the species of corns and even animals such as cows. These products have been proven to be a lot better from the ones that are of genetic endowment which only yield a fraction of the GMO yields. This only proves that the genetic engineering, that brought these products, does afford great opportunities for progress in food production and even in medicine worldwide.

But so what if GMO’s are promising in terms of nutrition and income? Would it make such great impact to the minds of the consumers when in fact many ethical issues have been arising along the discussions in introducing these products to people?

While the promise of GMO’s is very much in evidence, these same GMO’s have been the cause of outright war between researchers and ethics-concerned people. Myriad in the human population, including influential activists and members of the scientific community, have expressed concerns that genetic engineers are “playing God” by tampering with genetic material and that those GMO’s are their patent stuffs. This is only a manifestation of how advanced and how bad the technology is nowadays that it has encroached even to the natural principle that is supposed to be a patent of every unique organism.

Now my point here is solely on my disagreement to GMO products as human food on the ground that they show modifications on what God has given to every living thing on Earth. They are simply violations to the natural law that has been governing by Him. There are things in life that exist in nature, that is, they exist as that because it is fate that tells them so. Now playing with traits that are already imprinted in the genetic material of an organism is just an absurdity and that it is not something that humans should be practicing even though breakthroughs in science have already made an avenue for them to explore and possibly alter the prime carrier of the characteristics of an organism.

A label that only says “GM FOODS” simply acts as a brand- like POISON label, it shouts a warning to the public of lurking danger. For this reason, gene-modified crop would surely go a long way toward hastening public acceptance of gene technology in the kitchen or perhaps I insinuate that it would be a lot better if the GMO products will be kept only for the consumption of those people who don’t care of the moral infringement it poses on every living organism.